A bird not seen for almost 80 years has been discovered in the Pacific to the delight of conservationists.

Only two records of Beck’s petrel existed previously, from the late 1920s when ornithologist Rollo Beck collected two of the tube-nosed seabirds on his quest for museum specimens from the region.

Now, an expert on a ship in the Bismarck Archipelago, north-east of Papua New Guinea, has photographed more than 30 Beck’s petrels and his account is being published (March 7) in the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club. Young birds were amongst the group indicating that the birds have a breeding site close by.

Soon, the proud Bald Eagle will migrate onto the streets of Vancouver, Vancouver Island and beyond to complete the trilogy of public arts projects by the BC Lions Society. The first being the Orca coming out of the Pacific Ocean, then the Spirit Bear coming out of the forests of Northern BC and now the Bald Eagle soaring through the skies of the West Coast from April 2009 to April 2010 in support of the BC Lions Society’s Easter Seal Services and the Canucks for Kids Fund.

Local artists, in partnership with sponsoring individuals or organizations, will create a unique design and apply it to the surface of a 7 ˝ foot custom formed fibreglass Bald Eagle. The Bald Eagle becomes the artist's canvas. Once the work is complete, the Bald Eagle will be displayed in prominent public spaces around the participating cities

A white killer whale spotted in Alaska's Aleutian Islands sent researchers and their ship's crew scrambling for their cameras.The nearly mythic whale was real after all.

"I had heard about this whale but we had never been able to find it," said Holly Fearnbach, a research biologist with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle who photographed the rarity. "It was quite neat to find it."

Don't be cruel to caterpillars – they won't forget it. Moths and butterflies can remember what they learned as caterpillars, a study reveals.

The findings challenge the accepted wisdom that the insects – brains and all – are completely rewired during metamorphosis, and may provide clues about neural development. "Practically everything about the two phases of the organism are so different – morphology, diet, how they move, and what they sense," says Martha Weiss of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, in the US. "We were curious to see if we could train a caterpillar to do something it could remember as an adult," she says Weiss and colleagues exposed tobacco hornworm caterpillars, Manduca sexta, to ethyl acetate – a chemical often used in nail polish remover – and a series of mild electric shocks.

Caterpillar soupSeventy-eight percent of the caterpillars that were shocked directly after exposure avoided the compound in subsequent tests while still in the larval stage. The tests were conducted inside a Y-shaped pipe that allowed the animals to choose an area smelling of ethyl acetate or of unadulterated air.About a month later, after the caterpillars had metamorphosed, the adult moths were given the same choice test. Seventy-seven percent of them avoided the ethyl acetate pipe, suggesting that the lesson learned as a caterpillar is remembered as an adult. "People always thought that during metamorphosis the caterpillar turns to 'soup' and all the ingredients are rearranged into the butterfly or moth," says Weiss. "That clearly isn't what happens. Parts of the brain are retained that allow memories to persist through this very dramatic transition."

PRETORIA, South Africa - South Africa
said Monday that it will start killing elephants to reduce their
burgeoning numbers, ending a 13-year ban and possibly setting a
precedent for other African nations.

Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk
said the government was left with no choice but to reintroduce killing
elephants "as a last option and under very strict conditions" to reduce
environmental degradation and rising conflicts with humans.